A Net and His Beat Reporter

By

Scott Cacciola

Dec. 2, 2012 9:35 p.m. ET

By all appearances, Deron Williams has enjoyed the trappings of life as an NBA superstar. He has a five-year deal with the Nets worth $99 million. He spent his summer hobnobbing with fellow Olympians in London, where he helped Team USA win gold. In New York, companies looking to hawk everything from telephones to energy drinks have lined up to throw money at him, hoping to sign him as a celebrity pitchman. And lest we forget, he's friends with Jay-Z.

For most human beings, this would be enough. Not Williams, whose wide-ranging list of accomplishments and assets includes something extraordinary, unique even among pro athletes: He employs his own team of beat writers. Their mission? Spread the gospel of D-Will on his website, DeronWilliams.com.

ENLARGE

Deron Williams's personal website, DeronWilliams.com, is constantly updated with stories about him and the Nets.
Associated Press

"Pretty dope," rookie teammate Tyshawn Taylor said.

"That's big-time," veteran reserve Josh Childress said.

"He has what?" forward Kris Humphries asked.

The intersection of sports and social media is nothing new. Many athletes take to Twitter to connect with their fans, and that includes Williams, who has more than 300,000 followers.
Facebook
has its advocates, chief among them the Lakers' Kobe Bryant, who provides regular updates on everything from his reading list (lots of historical nonfiction) to his health ("Ankle still throbbing") to his breakfast (bananas and blueberries).

But websites maintained by individual athletes, featuring fresh material on an almost daily basis, are few and far between. Humphries, for example, has his own eponymous site—which was last updated in April, back when the Nets were still marooned in New Jersey. "I don't even know what's on there," he said.

Taking all that into account, DeronWilliams.com is cutting edge. Operated by a company called Athlete Interactive, the site has Williams-centric game stories, Williams-centric features and Williams-centric photo galleries. The site's editors shoehorn "Williams" or "D-Will" into roughly 90% of their headlines, which, to be fair, is sort of the point. The headline of one particularly exhaustive 1,850-word game story last week: "D-Will Stars as Nets Topple Knicks." "They do a great job of making sure it's personalized," Williams said.

This isn't muckrake journalism—Williams and his representatives at Excel Sports Management get to vet everything that goes live on the site—but they feel it serves a purpose. Launched not long after the Jazz traded Williams to the Nets in 2011, it was originally conceived as a way to enhance his appeal to sponsors in a new market. Jaymee Messler, the senior vice president for marketing at Excel, described it as "creating a larger brand portfolio" for him.

"I don't think many people outside of Utah got to know him," Messler said. "He really does treat this like a digital magazine. He's involved on a big level."

Williams is now the rare NBA player who has his very own reporter at many of the team's home games. The Nets, for the second straight season, have credentialed Devon Jeffreys, the content coordinator for Athlete Interactive, as a member of the working press. At Barclays Center, his lanyard reads: DeronWilliams.com. The Nets want to keep their point guard happy. "He's always been willing to give me access," Jeffreys said.

Jeffreys, a mild-mannered former newspaper reporter, built his relationship with Williams during last season's lockout. Williams was off in Europe, playing for Besiktas of the Turkish Basketball League, and his site became a form of public outreach. "There was no other way of getting information out there," said Jeffreys, who recalled logging onto Skype for an interview with Williams on Thanksgiving Day.

Once the lockout ended, and the Nets began to slog their way through their final season in Newark, the activity on DeronWilliams.com cooled by design. "We sort of stopped for a while," said David Neiman, the president of Athlete Interactive, "just because of the issues that they were having with regards to winning."

By comparison, there is a smorgasbord of content available on DeronWilliams.com this season. Winning is good for business, and the Nets are 11-5 ahead of Tuesday's game against the visiting Thunder. Want Williams's take on last week's near-brawl in Boston? Curious about his recent appearance on NBC's "Late Night with Jimmy Fallon"? Looking for instructions on how to vote for Williams as an NBA All-Star? The site has you covered.

Celtics guard Jason Terry, who golfs with Williams in the off-season, said he likes the concept. So much, in fact, that he would like to make a cameo. "I want to be the first one to get an exclusive, one-on-one, 30-minute interview with DeronWilliams.com," Terry said. Neiman said he would be glad to make that happen.

Athlete Interactive publishes online sites for about 22 athletes, many of them Excel clients. DeronWilliams.com ranks among the more comprehensive. Neiman said one of his goals is to help these athletes "maximize their financial opportunities"—or at least prevent them from doing stupid things that wind up costing them money. "You can explain to them how to do it in a way so they're not shooting themselves in the foot," Neiman said.

In some ways, a vanity website might seem excessive. Williams is already a celebrity. Does he really need more press? At least seven media outlets cover the Nets on a regular basis. The difference is ownership: DeronWilliams.com is the one slice of the Web where he has total authority over what is written about him.

Magic guard Arron Afflalo recently signed on with Athlete Interactive to launch his own site, ArronAfflalo4.com. "It was an opportunity for me to—how do I put it?—control my exposure a little bit," he said.

Unlike Williams, Afflalo doesn't have his own reporter at home games. "Maybe one day," he said.

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